"unclenching" poems
“A groan of tedium escapes me, startling the fearful
Is this a test? It has to be, otherwise I can't go on.
Haven't written a word in three and a half years.
Time to take the broom out to this shallow grave”
Middlesteps
~~~~(|)~~~~
For
deep is the fear, coated in thickening veneer
of might-be-bravery,
the weight, Oh, the weight!
of that writing utensil that both
bears and bares all,
an uncomfortable unconscious,
uncontrollable surrender
that sweeps down upon us,
when first we seek the unwieldy unwinding
of our proactive fist of a first step,
the unclenching, the open face palm,
seeing our lifeline’s revelation, the shame,
the lines we thought that faded away,
upended, open ended, that the worst
un-finishing, but here I am, my taking, the
baby steps of Middlesteps,
only looking
back to forwards for permission,
a new looking inward
forward!
we confesses, beg for our own forgiveness
for ourselves, the years of summary silence ,
at last!
unveiled and unbound, this first step stinks of
tremors, poems never writ up, but on our mouths
and fingertips yet memorized as IF they were bespoke
this return,
“startling the fearful,”
a provocation to the mirrored images
caked on my disheartened body,
goes lightly noticed, but not by me!
daily, I ask the bay and the sky, the animals,
the query lives in almost each of my scripts,
Where is Shelter?
today the answer is not an apparition,
but the question is rephrased,
not where! but when
the answer is now apparent,
for the seed planted, this is for you,
watering the seed, feeding the shoot,
that I know too well,
for asked and I answer,
everyday…
Sep 24, 2023
Sep 24, 2023 at 11:53 AM UTC
when day breaks and brazen stands the sun
as if to say, it is day, the storm has passed
once more
you lay in a pool of soft sand, a whisper of what once was
fists clenching and unclenching
silence so deafening you ache
it feels so unpleasant, this ease
comfort was not meant for you, where do you even place yourself in a scene meant for someone else?
you make suffering your home
the cold tiles a cornerstone
but the suffering has ended in spite of you
of all your pleas to stay in a race for survival
trotting on battered rubble-bound roads
and despite it all
you are safe and free
the sun lapses in providing warmth
but never stills
and neither have you
before now
and yet
happiness does not creep in, nor does it knock
nor barges or in wanders
you are left empty in a filled space
almost to the point of combustion
and this is how you shall stay
shivering, the rays hurling themselves at any surface besides you
fruitless, the suffering meant so very little besides all that you knew
empty, just as the space next to you
Nov 15, 2023
Nov 15, 2023 at 1:27 PM UTC
Their violence. Their fire. Their beauty.
Their clenching, unclenching. Their bedlam.
Their silence.
Their toes squirming in their shoes. Their sobs. Their seventy-mile-an-hour fury.
Their eyes. Their glimmer. Their construction paper dreams.
Their insecurities. Their melanin.
Their rapture. Their forgiveness. Their twisted-up mouths.
Their screaming.
Their laughter. Their spoiled innocence. Their decent.
Their wilderness of wit. Their barbed future. Their ineloquence.
Their noise. Their stretching limbs.
Their vigor. Their hair spurting out of their scalps.
Their secrets echoing and singing through low-ceilinged halls. Their desire.
Their chipped orange fingernail polish. Their belly aches.
Their misspelled crayon messages. Their ghosts. Their audacity.
Their fear. Their braids. Their arms tight around each other.
Their torn jeans. Their longing.
Their possibility.
Their harpoon words. Their blood. Their bursting hearts.
Their walls. Their art.
Their endlessness.
Their airplane arms and their shrieking and their streaming outside into the yellow ache of a sinking sun.
Their rhythm. Their nonsense.
Their hands cupped around their mouths.
Their reverberation. Their chapped lips. Their love.
Them.
Mar 18, 2015
Mar 18, 2015 at 5:08 PM UTC
To the kid in the hallway telling his friend
"Maybe you need a **** whistle."
And to her response, a sarcastic
"Matt, **** jokes aren't funny."
You're **** right they aren't
Tell me, how is anyone forcing themself onto another person funny?
How are the I don't want tos when her "no" couldn't scream loud enough funny?
How are the ****** thighs and bruised hips funny?
How is the waking up in the middle of the night
How are the flashbacks and her wailing funny?
How is the seven year-old who had so much anxiety she'd tear her hair out
Or a sixteen year-old who kept eyeliner and a kitchen knife side by side in her purse funny?
It's about as funny as a slaughterhouse full of pigs taunting the other pigs
And telling them their approaching doomsday is amusing.
I dug my key into the palm of my hand like a knife when I heard this jeer
Clenching and unclenching a fist
Because I knew if I did not
That hand would go right through your faces.
You do not know the impact of your words
You see, for a survivor
Jokes about ****** assault are triggers.
They bring back every memory
Which becomes a stinging tear behind an eyeball
Fighting not to emerge from its home.
When I say something
Classically I am being "too sensitive"
Just as I was "too sensitive"
When he told me to get on top of him
And I said no
So much courage mustered up in a little body
I could have moved mountains that day
I could have been my own goddess
At seven years old
But he did not care
He was bigger than me
And he imposed that will onto my body
Reducing my childlike frame to the size of a fly
Being swatted by the paw of a lion.
I will not be silent
So when you tell a **** joke and I am in earshot
Do not expect me to laugh
Because there is nothing funny about a slaughterhouse.
Nov 21, 2014
Nov 21, 2014 at 10:29 AM UTC
Mellow,/
good riddance,/
no lyrical sides/
their call, heaven/
fall,/
with cigarette word-
lapping,/
boat too close to the wall/
circumcising by verbals done/
up dying,/
Child us a sandbox of sense/
stretching holding/
out on a ghostly hand/
We are the walls/
place Poetry finds acute vivid lining/
verses, our eyes meshing/
hole unclenching/
Killing lectures about it, how dictionarising/
And Le Clézio’s wing alive/
abide/
Taking flight/
~
Sep 1, 2020
Sep 1, 2020 at 7:11 AM UTC
funny to think I have been so caLm and together
amidst the greater untogetherness of my life
the laughing audience in my head cackling
at the laughable audience following my cracking
if it were set in sides of a scale
I'd be afeared to watch it balance
mayhap some creature of diRe
would erupt in a tangle of talons
that's what I'm afraid of after all,
that I am the pungent void that consumes
the eyes that glide low in the grass
and rise up with hate and ******
the teeth that bite with unclenching malevolence
bite biTe BITE YOUR WEAK ******* FLESH
AND SNAP YOUR WORTHLESS PILE OF BONES
SNAP
SNAP
SNAP
CRACKLE
CRACK
DON'T
YOU
EVER
COME
BaCK
HURt YOuR neGLiGeNT sOULs wITH thE PaIN
yOu alloWed to hIM to iNFLict On me...
but dEath still coils a leaf slowly to the ground
even for such thiNgs
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 11:44 PM UTC
Whose dreary face now becomes warmth – an ash turning
into a single drop of water
I love and I have – and I know that when she looks
she does not. Nothing moves the bird of her dawn but
her. Proletariats sing of steel in the night and I deaden
within their homes. Whose dreary face now becomes
the steady light on the porch – a thigh, or a river, turning
into a single gasp of song.
I love and I have – and I know that when she sings
she does not. Her silence moves the moon deep within
its womb and annuls. Each moment in her shoes, she is absent,
and I taste the pale death of her precise waist,
her sharp tongue having me curved when enough was said
when empty was sure. I know whose face I am talking to,
but knows not what day has escaped me. The possible:
to bring her so small in my hand, and invent her this fate,
to be unclenching like water and virile like stone. I know
the singular act of her likeness is born out of my lack:
there is a spring-clean image traipsing the water. I must chase
where it streams, and its origins not my own.
The city borders us two as we are demanded by the daily:
the smell of a home shoals me a satiny sob. Still the marvelous
sky, a knife, if not referring to me, the cut lily that is the Sun.
Whose dreary face now becomes a store,
commerce, becomes the silver of hills, becomes the gray assault
of an old cathedral, becomes the surety of a transaction
and then becomes wind chiming through cities. Becomes inquiry
between I love and I have – becomes dearth and is proud.
Nothing will stop the train arriving: when thirsty for a glimpse
like mine a fountain or a singular wave from an opened window,
she passes – and does not look for me.
Jun 9, 2016
Jun 9, 2016 at 3:21 AM UTC
She speaks with her hands.
Long, elegant fingers - pulling, twisting, curling.
Soft and strong - an artist's hands; their uses unlimited.
Her hands clasped so intimately with my own - clenching and unclenching; she directs our motion.
Her back arches as I tighten my grip on her thighs and breath in her scent.
She tastes of honey and sunlight and something bitter that is so indefinably her, I never tire of it.
Her hands fist in the sheets and I am gone; yielding completely.
She tells me it's my lips.
She places kisses along my collar bone and trails them down towards my breast and stares up through her bangs to watch my lips.
She tells me there's a silence in my smile that contents her.
Parting my flesh her fingers etch truths into my skin. I am lost in the imagery of her words.
A chorus of sweet nonsense passes between us and I breath it in, allowing it to spur me towards completion.
I feel the harshness of her breath in my ribs and the trembling of her body as we ride out the waves.
She buries her face in my neck and smiles.
I am content, wrapped securely in the silence that creates her.
Our story, written in the sheets - tomorrows laundry.
Aug 9, 2011
Aug 9, 2011 at 6:48 PM UTC
this unruly night
is macadamized on the wall,
whit its bare-knuckled steel mangled
to a ferruginous glaze of rust.
the dismal kiss of
cold on the unclenching fist of the dark
is irretrievable in the grass,
soon, glass-faces will break as my simian jaw
was once shattered by a scuffle in the twilight-bells
of recess.
it is like the night dances and in awe,
struck by some rude awakening, we sit forever
emptied of beauties.
even the flesh rouses to startle the reared relation
of calla – its hot-flush widespread of petals
thought I am given always, an intone of forgetfulness.
such pure lunges and gyrations – we all have
spaces to cross latching us in total placeness like
black hooks impinging voices to a shriek,
yet surely they go off wandering in sunsets
waning in the formless crepuscular, waiting the night
to pour stringencies,
small-breathed furies futile
like arsenic.
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 10:51 PM UTC
I had that good good muscle ache take me down to easy town
Kind of night
3am rolled around all cranky and late but willing
That's the way these hills, these hour glass valleys
Keep time
I'm wearing red, hoping for a charge
Raging bull going in for the slick slit ****
Right there.
Always tasting like a new adventure
Each touch feeling like home
Blood rushes to flushed cheeks
Just... a... little... more
Gold coin electric pulse scatter on the cobble stone streets of my soul
I can feel each cold edge bounce and echo
Ting Ting Ting
Body clenching and unclenching in tune
Mouths fused, wet with honey
Sweet with a sting
I cannot get enough of this running
A hunger beyond thirst, for this love
Sep 5, 2014
Sep 5, 2014 at 1:02 PM UTC
slighted fingertips
withdrawing from a near-fatal embrace
how does it feel?
to brush precariously
at the edge of something
infinitely beautiful;
to find the void
greeting you instead.
curled at waist height
or tied
to the belt loops of jeans
or smushed into pockets,
balled up
waiting for another
chance to extend again.
there in the throes of night
unclenching, reclenching fists lay,
wondering
will the next time will be different
and
how will it feel?
Nov 18, 2020
Nov 18, 2020 at 6:43 PM UTC
I think that the hardest part of moving on is letting go
I used to believe that they were synonymous
boy, was I wrong
I've moved on plenty of times with plenty of people
but I never truly let go of him
I was afraid that if I loosened my grip and really let go,
I would never hold on to anyone again
(which I know now to be utterly false)
So, I again loved and lost and loved and lost
but now I am faced with the same familiar dilemma
of coordinating my demands with my extrinsic muscles
and unclenching my fists that I have so tightly latched onto you
(I just can't seem to let this one go)
-
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 4:53 AM UTC
Hot breath, fog on the window.
Hands on the glass frame
Holding on,
Pain, shame!
A silent tear slides down rounded cheek
Leaked down from a clear blue pool of
Innocence and sincerity and strength.
Questions flying throughc clouded mind,
Emotion held with in a sigh.
Smile brightly, laugh out loud.
Sleeves pulled down, wristbands wary
Waiting for the shock and dismay
For the rejection and harsh words.
Bring on the hurt...
Emotional pain is ten times worse
Than anything else.
Muscles tense and waiting,
Yearning for redemption.
Back tight, jaws clamped.
Eyes piercing against the bland mask
That hides all.
Lips ready to quiver or
Fake words of comforting empathy.
Voice waiting for its cue
To laugh and chase away any type of doubt.
Hands, clenching and unclenching,
Showing more emotion than anything.
Finger nails digging into palms
Leaving bright red crescent marks.
Feet sluggishly sliding from destination to destination.
Will it ever stop raining?
Will the sun ever shine?
Mar 25, 2011
Mar 25, 2011 at 7:28 PM UTC
It is not weak to yield
nor is it courageous
to rely on subterfuge
Speaking your inner truth
comes from daring to brave
eye rolls
shaking of heads
and mouths that smile yet
form cruel sentences all the same
You'll bleed
dripping perspiration
oozing all the love
you cannot find
Just when it seems as if
the sun is obscured by clouds
you get to your feet
tense muscles unclenching
utterly at the mercy
of all the light
you are just now starting to see.
-Esther L. Krenzin-
-Roguesong-
May 15, 2019
May 15, 2019 at 10:41 AM UTC
My mouth cracked
and bent emptied;
Pulled taut, my dam
against the light.
I still don’t know why,
but down the stairs
I went, with thirst
as my excuse
(although, I suppose
I was thirsty)
I left almost everything
upstairs in bed:
My arms and legs
wrapped warm under
misty sheets,
my teeth and torso
unclenching in sleep.
All I needed to see
was an eye and shivers—
An eye to see
Grandma sleep,
An eye to see
her husband’s paintings guard the room;
Shivers at those paintings
and knowing her from then on.
Mar 22, 2011
Mar 22, 2011 at 1:45 PM UTC
I'll peer through the flaxen strand
of night
with your color that excites,
and think myself the blue pither of fire
or a flummoxed stone left unturned.
it's not the rapture of a knowledgeable
beast or the common grip
of the eye's gift for unsparing detail.
it's the way the queen moves to all
corners unclenching a fold of sidereal,
and then like a child with almond eyes
spruced up, spritzed this morning's
incandescent dye,
the lapping of strange tides revealing
fish with dreams of brine
or that one moment when you had
at first light, the hot flush of coming
into, recognizing insatiable appetite,
whistling its overdue intent and the detritus
we try to hide when we had that virginal moment of once and never looking back
at mirrors.
Feb 20, 2016
Feb 20, 2016 at 3:00 AM UTC
The air is thick with tension
Limpid red rimmed eyes, ready
for waterworks at a moment’s notice
Hands repeatedly
Clenching and unclenching
Feet drumming
Lips pursed, turning white
Stomach clenched
Wound up
Like a spring
Permeating sense of foreboding
...
As the teacher hands out our history test
Sep 14, 2018
Sep 14, 2018 at 10:53 AM UTC
A teardrop
escapes
slowly meandering
down the slope of
her tear-soaked face
A sigh
barely audible
hanging on her lips
gets swept away by
a cold autumn wind
A stray
lock of hair
dangling unnoticed
as her eyes focus
beyond the horizon
A fist
Unclenching
hangs by her side
as anger fades and
resilience takes root
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 3:03 PM UTC
You feel stories are always unsolicited. You do not want them.
You want to feel the agony of the moment – all the more the electricity of it. A moment mottled by
rain this ordinary Thursday afternoon, or the dust eloping in the wind as we drove past 50 in the middle
of the night, you telling me I do not clean my car thoroughly, like that of a lady’s. You feel stories pose
no importance. Say, at the edge of our seats or at the jagged lip of a cliff – you would dare say jump,
alone, unwound, unfettered, resolute, obvious and available in truancy, out of incalculable fear of
existing – you took the plunge and claimed it’s all the same. Apertures frantic with dazed visions of
fondness. Vertical leap, cutting through the vague sky. Keeping some sense of freedom, yet we are not
as free as we think. You do not want a story. You do not buy its thrills. You chortle at the idea of lasting things because they have hands that are clenched and frenzied. They brand. They are territorial. You are no territory. You are an island, adrift somewhere, breathing on its own in between penumbras of want
and coasts of dread. You feel characters do not change scripts. They change how you say things. Say, when he told you were needed, and I told you that you insist your forceful importance – you felt the need
to dab into the air and spire through the thickness of the dark, flamboyant with the color of freedom, you said, pale as a dove, I am free. Finally, the man might have left somewhere without you knowing it, and just as you are unclenching your wings, you project your pace into the sky like an unseen margin in the invisibility of all invisibilities – it is impossible to look away. You felt stories are not needed. You wanted experience. The end of a dull knife, the sound of a .45 shot into the sky as the police circle the filthy streets of Quezon City. You in your Chuck Taylors, running, looking for some tough nook to hide in – omen of another rain in sight. You remembered when you first bathed in rain and laughed a laugh so impossible with high notes and shrills – you laughed away like you were not coming back, because there is no need for a story. Now left to wondering in the vastness of the room before me, was it something
to be believed? A broken orchestra enters with its surrendering music and everything is ended. I fell asleep, still dreaming of running away.
Mar 25, 2016
Mar 25, 2016 at 12:33 AM UTC
#
There are cries that come
like weather—
loud, sudden,
gone before they finish saying
what needed to be said.
And then there are the others.
The ones that wait for years
to find a home
safe enough
to be heard.
Tonight, it wasn’t just a song
that broke you—
it was the quiet
after the song ended,
the part where someone stayed.
No questions
or fixing.
Just presence,
while you folded
into the sound of your own heart
finally unclenching.
You didn’t cry because you were weak.
You cried because
you were ready
to stop pretending
it didn’t matter.
And the silence that followed
wasn’t empty—
it was full of everything
you never got to say.
So let this be the night
you remember not what shattered,
*but who stayed
long enough
to help you gather the pieces.*
#
Jun 18, 2025
Jun 18, 2025 at 9:16 PM UTC
We, as poets
we fear the tangible
our fingers have lost the ability to
touch, to
feel
from
nights spent clutching our pens
from
unclenching our fists
from
peeling our
fingertips away from the ones we cannot afford to lose.
From pressing the familiar lines of our
palms together while looking
up past the cracked ceiling
up past the cloud that Darius calls
God
We, as poets, do not believe in a
heaven, for
Purgatory
is so sweet
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 6, 2014 at 12:05 PM UTC
Your lips find my very weak spot
And I tingle
Does this make ashamed or should it? I do not know yet I cluster myself together to give you more
Then the blackness settles as the euphoria momentarily blinds us
Our other senses of the world suddenly unknown to us as only the clenching and unclenching of our bodies is what we know
Our knowledge suddenly becomes limited
And we can only speak words of "you" "I" and "love"
Bodies were not made to express this length of work and I am sure we indefinately destroyed ours, but we do not seem to mind as we push through
Hips connect and eyes roll as creatures from celtic and godly realms rejoice at the meeting of our minds,souls and bodies
They speak confused as to how such a connection can even be humanistic or even possible
You and I unaware of this attention, carry on and heave but for us it is not an unpleasant sound but one that let's us know the end is yet to come.
Oct 2, 2015
Oct 2, 2015 at 3:53 PM UTC
The art of letting go is not as easy
as unclenching your fists
feeling the weight of burden slipping through your fingertips
The sweet release of not caring
is not something I’m familiar with or know
I carry this feeling inside of me
and for some reason I can’t let it go.
Sep 9, 2018
Sep 9, 2018 at 10:02 PM UTC
your head is always in front of mine
you are the view blocking the moon
i feel my knees unlocking, spine unclenching
to dive into the cycles of your hair
before
i was intimate with all
i had lovers in bean sprouts, molluscks, damp winds
my days were humid with things I could see
i woke this morning under a red pillow
an arm heavy just below rib cage
a leg strewn across unlocked knee caps
i decided not to gasp
rather, i did not know how to gasp
carbon, in every single element
somehow
i am screaming at you for hiding
how did i get here?
Jan 26, 2017
Jan 26, 2017 at 9:15 PM UTC